


A Matter of Life and Death

by fredbassett



Series: Ghost Ryan [4]
Category: Primeval
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 12:33:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18873298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/pseuds/fredbassett
Summary: The ability to occasionally become more substantial brings dangers for Ryan.





	A Matter of Life and Death

“Push!” Connor urged enthusiastically.

“He’s not having a baby, Conn,” Becker said, clearly not trying very hard to keep the amusement out of his voice.

Connor glared at him and didn’t dignify the comment with a reply.

Ryan concentrated hard and reached out his hand, willing his fingers to make contact with the upturned plastic cup rather than passing straight through it. His first attempt was a failure and he had to fight hard to control his irritation at his inability to perform a simple action. But he knew he had to learn to keep his emotions in check. If he was the cause of any more blown lights or exploding kettles, Lester wouldn’t be amused.

He closed his eyes, steadied his hand and tried again. This time he felt his fingers touch the plastic rather than slide through it. The cup started to move across the board.

F

Ryan allowed himself a small smile. It was working. It was really working.

U

He kept his eyes on the small white cup and flexed his fingers, settling his hand on the plastic.

C

It started to crumple under his touch so Ryan reduced the pressure slightly.

K

His smile widened. This was definitely getting easier. Connor and Becker had stopped taking the piss and were now leaning forward, staring at the board just as intently as Ryan. He took hold of the cup and slid it quickly to the last three letters to spell OFF.

Ryan sat back and folded his arms, dispensing a look of triumph.

“I told you buying a Ouija board for his birthday was a good idea!” Connor said in delight.

“Holding séances in work time, gentlemen?”

“It’s occupational therapy,” Connor countered, grinning widely at Lester who was standing in the doorway not doing a terribly good job of suppressing his amusement at their antics. “He’s just told us to fuck off!”

“I’m sure the captain could have done that without the aid of a Ouija board and a supply of plastic cups.” Lester sauntered into the recreation room, picked up half of the stack, favoured the three of them with one of his trademark supercilious smiles and then walked out again.

“He loves us really,” Connor said picking up the upturned cup and putting it back in the middle of the board. “OK, who fancies a game of scrabble?”

The strident tones of the ADD drowned out any reply he might have got and both Connor and Becker dashed out of the door, the soldier a couple of paces ahead, but as quick as they both were, Ryan was faster.

The duty technician hastily scooted backwards in his chair, ran into Finn and earned himself a strongly-worded curse. Finn grinned and said, “Neat trick, boss. Can you walk through walls and rattle chains as well?”

“Yes, of course I bloody well can,” Ryan replied. “It goes with the whole being dead thing.” Although to be strictly accurate he hadn’t progressed as far as rattling chains yet, or taking off his head and tucking it under his arm, but no doubt Connor had a few experiments along those lines lined up for some point in the future. And he didn’t actually walk through walls he just sort of… bypassed them.

Connor skidded to a halt in front of the array of screens and demanded, “Where is it?”

“The Forest of Dean,” the technician told him. “Again.”

Connor looked at Ryan and raised his eyebrows questioningly. “Can you scoot over there and take a look? It’ll take us about 45 minutes to get there in the helicopter.”

The helicopter was their latest toy, and Ryan had to admit that it was a bloody useful one. He wished they’d had that resource available when he’d been in command of the response teams. It had made the whole business of driving at illegal and dangerous speeds on their way to a call out obsolete. And if you were Finn, who enjoyed throwing Range Rovers around blind bends on country roads, it had also made them a lot less fun.

Ryan looked over Connor’s shoulder at the map. The anomaly wasn’t just in the Forest of Dean, it looked like it was in the same place as the original anomaly, the one that had started it all. And the same one that had probably been responsible for trapping him in this unfathomable half-life.

“I can do that,” he said confidently. He felt enough connection to that particular spot to be sure that he could find his way there, like a cat making its way home on a dark night.

The rest of the team arrived in the control centre in a flurry of questions. Ryan stepped back, but not before he felt the slight jolt of Nick Cutter’s elbow in his side.

The professor stared at him in amazement. “You’re solid!”

Ryan shrugged. “It happens. It would be better if I could control it.”

Cutter smiled at him and gave Ryan a pat on the shoulder that he actually felt. “You’re getting there. I’ve got some experiments I want to run when we get back.”

“Looking forward to it already, Professor,” Ryan lied. “Connor, I’ll see you over there. I daren’t get anywhere near you when you’re in the air.”

Connor nodded as he ran some final checks. “Yep, we’ll be there as fast as we can. If you need to contact us, come back here and get someone to use the radio to call us.”

Ryan nodded and then before he even had a chance to blink, he was standing in a clearing in a forest, staring at a spinning ball of light, white and bright, but with a strange ruby tinge to the edges of the shifting shards of time. Ryan promptly stared around him at the ground, attempting to ascertain whether anything had come through yet. He waked around the anomaly, covering every inch of the ground, wishing he had even half of Stephen’s skill at this sort of thing.

As far as he could tell there wasn’t even a bent blade of grass to account for the passing of any creature, but that didn’t rule out something that could fly. He stopped and listened. The forest was alive with the sound of birdsong, something that had been notably absent whenever they’d had to deal with creatures from the past that could fly.

Ryan stared at the anomaly, feeling its magnetic field crackling across his skin like an electric charge. It made him feel… alive. He took a step forwards and held out one hand. The magnetism pricked at him like a bad case of pins and needles. He took another step towards the cause of his discomfort, holding both hands out now, watching the dancing fragments of time play around him, moving in, over and through him. It felt strangely invigorating and without thinking too closely about what he was about to do, Ryan simply walked into the heart of the anomaly…

The dull brown and gold of a wet autumn was immediately replaced by strong sunlight and a slight breeze. Ryan felt the damp red mud of the Forest of Dean under his boots change to the hard, rocky terrain of what he knew instantly was the Permian. He’d been there before on two separate occasions and each time he’d marvelled at the harsh, stark beauty of the arid landscape that now stretched as far as his eyes could see. The long sweep of dark sand and rock gave way in places to sudden bursts of green vegetation, surprising in their lush verdure.

As far as Ryan could tell, the anomaly had opened in the same places as before. He recognised the contours of the valley, now populated by a large herd of herbivores moving ponderously through the inhospitable terrain, cropping the stunted bushes as they lumbered on.

He could see no sign of any tracks left behind by human beings. For all Ryan knew he could have arrived here before their original trip through time, or indeed afterwards, and as he stared around him, Ryan half-expected to see himself come into view, Nick’s prone form over his shoulder as he obeyed Claudia’s instruction to bring him back.

Claudia. Claudia Brown.

Ryan drew in a sharp intake of breath. In the world he’d just left, Claudia Brown had never existed.

Ryan glanced back at the anomaly, feeling a prickle of unease running up and down his spine. He hadn’t remembered Claudia Brown before. But to be fair, he’d been having a hard enough time coming to grips with the fact that he was dead, so Cutter’s ramblings hadn’t come very high on his list of things to be concerned about. But now memories were crowding into his mind of his first trip through an anomaly in company with Cutter, and he could quite clearly picture the beautiful auburn-haired woman who’d delivered his mission brief to accompany Cutter into the past and bring him back alive. Something Ryan had accomplished by the simple expedient of knocking the recalcitrant academic out with the butt of his gun, and later by a blow from his fist.

As he looked around, thoughts swirled in Ryan’s head, dancing and swooping like Rex’s cousins wheeling in the air above him. The proximity to the anomaly made him feel stronger; made him feel like he would have no problem picking up one of the rocks and throwing it down the slope in front of him.

To prove the point, Ryan bent down, hefted a rock in his hand, feeling its rough edges against his palm, and then tossed it away from him, hearing the sharp crack as it hit other stones on the ground and rolled down the hill, taking others with it. He picked up a second stone and, without even knowing why, dragged it across the palm of his left hand, scraping away skin and drawing blood.

He brought his hand to his mouth and licked at the damage he’d done, tasting the coppery tang of blood mixed with the salty taste of his own sweat. He didn’t pretend to know what had happened to him or indeed what was still happening, but he was certain that the anomalies themselves had played a part. His almost lifeless body had been carried back through an anomaly on a makeshift stretcher. The last thing he’d remembered at that point was the shock of the future predator’s attack, the numbing pain that had accompanied the knowledge that he was almost certainly going to die and then later, much later, the even more frightening knowledge that he had somehow managed to retain a form of consciousness.

Ryan’s recollection of the early days of his new existence was hazy. He had memories of making attempts to communicate with those he loved, attempts that had always ended in disaster when some item of electrical equipment in his vicinity had malfunctioned, usually with spectacular results. Saying his name had been enough to call him out of his shadowy existence, but various people soon seemed to put two and two together and took steps to ensure that wherever possible they didn’t tempt fate. But despite the ever-growing conspiracy of silence, Ryan’s ties to this world had gradually strengthened.

Ryan had watched as Connor had slowly grown closer to the young captain who had taken Ryan’s place at the head of the military team and he had been pleased to see his young lover finally start to heal. Ryan’s feelings towards Becker had been ambivalent at first, but the man had slowly earned his respect as well as that of the soldiers under his command and the civilians whose lives he was trying to safeguard.

There had been brief moments when Ryan had been able to touch Connor, taking the young man he loved in his arms and holding him, and in those moments Ryan’s yearning for what he’d lost had been almost too hard to bear. But he had never been able to sustain those all too transitory flashes of solidity. And when Connor had nearly died, trapped in water beneath a ruined warehouse, Ryan had somehow joined his strength with Becker’s to drag him out, a feat that neither man could have managed on their own. An electro-magnetic pulse from the anomaly had kick-started Connor’s heart and he had survived but Ryan had known better than anyone apart from Ditzy how close they’d come to losing him.

The fact that Becker had developed feelings for Connor had come as no particular surprise to Ryan. He’d had a ring-side seat inside Becker’s head when they had been fighting to save Connor’s life and he’d found it impossible to resent the young captain who had been prepared to sacrifice his own life for the man Ryan loved. The three of them were bound together now in ways that Ryan couldn’t even begin to fathom but he knew they would just have to play the hand they’d been dealt.

With a last look around to make sure nothing was approaching the anomaly that might constitute a threat, Ryan stepped back through the glittering fragments of time and waited for the ARC team to arrive. They would have to set the helicopter down a little way from the anomaly and come in the rest of the way on foot, but in a relatively short space of time Ryan head the low drone in the air that heralded their arrival.

“Nothing has come through,” he announced to Becker’s evident relief as soon as the team reached him.

The soldiers set up a perimeter around the anomaly, moving with practised efficiency, while Connor started to take readings.

I told you to seal the perimeter, not dry stone wall it. Claudia Brown’s words from the anomaly at the golf course came back to mind and Ryan wondered how he had been able to forget her. He knew he would need to broach the subject with Cutter at some point, but not now. He didn’t want to spark off any more hare-brained excursions.

Stephen Hart and Finn double-checked for any tracks that might have eluded Ryan’s eyes once they finally pronounced the area to be clear, all the rest of the team had to do was wait. Two hours later, the anomaly still showed no signs of fading and Ryan knew that Cutter was itching to take a look through it. Becker was always adamantly opposed to any idea of going through the anomalies except as a last resort, and Ryan couldn’t blame him for that. Babysitting a strong-minded and unpredictable bunch of scientists wasn’t an easy job at the best of times and keeping them safe on the other side of one of the rips in time was the stuff of nightmares.

“It’ll take 15 minutes, Becker, that’s all,” Cutter declared. “It looks stable and we’ll come back through at the first sign of trouble.”

Becker’s face took on the studiously neutral expression he always adopted when dealing with Cutter but Ryan knew he wasn’t happy. “It’s an unnecessary risk, Professor. You can take the readings you want from this side.”

“It’s the magnetic field on the other side I want a record of and I can’t get that if I stay here. This anomaly keeps recurring and I want to know what’s different about it.”

“And I want to make sure you stay safe,” Becker delivered the words calmly and quietly, staring down from his greater height into Cutter’s truculent blue eyes.

“We need data, man!”

The argument showed every signs of escalating despite Becker’s attempts to reason with Cutter. At Ryan’s side, Lyle muttered, “He’s onto a bloody loser, boss, but full marks for trying. Maybe he needs to take a leaf out of your book?”

Ryan grinned. He wasn’t sure he was likely see Becker thumping Cutter with the butt of his gun, no matter how much the young captain might want to. Becker was somewhat more conventional in his approach to the job than Ryan had ever been but if Cutter kept this up, Becker might well start to think outside the box where the management of key personnel was concerned.

Becker’s mask of professionalism was showing signs of starting to crack as he turned to Lyle and said tersely, “Take one of the men and tell me whether or not it’s clear on the other side.”

Lyle nodded. The lieutenant gestured to Blade and the two men stepped up to the anomaly, hesitated for the barest fraction of a second and then strode into the fragmented light. Ryan, no longer subject to any chain of command in the field, followed them.

“Fuck!” Lyle wasn’t easily shocked, but the site that met their eyes was enough to give a severe jolt to anyone’s composure.

The anomaly was surrounded by a mass of creatures, all crowding forwards like a herd of curious cows, heads outstretched, large bodies smelling warm and musky in the heat. But there the resemblance ended as no cow Ryan had ever seen had possessed a mouthful of teeth as sharp as any of Blade’s knives and a bloody great big fin sprouting up from their backs.

Teeth flashed in the sunlight, laying Lyle’s arm open to the bone before the lieutenant had a chance to react. Blade did what was now standard operating procedure on a contact like this and fired a three-round burst into the air, hoping to scare the creatures away without the need to use lethal force. They seemed impervious to the noise, pressing forwards rather than backwards. Blade grabbed Lyle’s uninjured arm and hauled him backwards into the anomaly.

As they tumbled back into the Forest of Dean, Blade yelled, “Incoming!” He grabbed a flash grenade out of a pocket in his equipment vest, primed it and threw it into the anomaly a moment before the area around him erupted into chaos.

Ryan felt something charge past him and heard a deep, rumbling growl. The equally deep roar of Becker’s Mossberg told him that any attempt at neutralising the creatures with non-lethal force had just been cast to the four winds. He saw Abby throw herself to one side, out of the path of one of the beasts. The monitoring equipment Cutter and Conner had set up was trampled into the ground.

One of the biggest dangers in a close-quarter melee like this was the risk of friendly fire, but the soldiers were well-drilled, verifying their targets before letting any bullets fly. He saw patches of red sprout from the dark hides of the creatures but they were clearly hard to stop.

One followed Abby as she tried to scramble away. Lyle aimed his M4 left-handed, the rifle clamped to his side by his good arm while the other dangled uselessly at his side, blood coating his hand and loosed a burst, but his aim was off and the bullets did nothing more than shred the huge, raised sail fin. Lyle swore violently and threw his rifle to Ryan and drew his Glock 19 instead.

Without stopping to think, Ryan gripped the M4, the metal warm to his touch, and squeezed the trigger, sending a short burst into the creature’s brain. Jaws open, it continued to pursue Abby. She rolled over and over on the damp ground as teeth flashed within inches of her leg, coming all too close to hamstringing her. Lyle’s face was glazed with pain, but he dropped to one knee, steadied his left arm on his leg and proceeded to fire single, aimed shots at the animal’s head while Ryan did his best to find and shred a suitably vital organ while around him yells and gunshots told their own tale.

The dimetrodon – Ryan hadn’t spent umpteen months in close proximity to Connor without learning something of the creatures – finally staggered and started to fall. Abby rolled again and then came to her feet in a swift movement, spinning on one heel on the soft ground as she launched a vicious kick at the jaws of another animal that had just made a lunge for Cutter’s head. Her actions bought enough time to allow Cutter to dive sideways, out of its reach.

The percussive blast of another flash bang detonated in what seemed to be the middle of the anomaly and the shock wave rocked Ryan on his feet. A large head that had been about to come through to join the party clearly thought better of it and withdrew. The defenders appeared to be starting to get the upper hand. Ryan saw Stephen ram the barrel of a tranquiliser rifle between the jaws of another dimetrodon and pull the trigger. At his side, Cutter picked up a piece of no doubt expensive equipment and used the metal box to give a third one something to chew on. Blade opened a long gash in the throat of yet another while narrowly avoiding being disembowelled.

As it always seemed to do in such circumstances, time slowed to a crawl. Ryan saw one of the dimetrodons moving forward at a rolling run, its gait awkward but no barrier to speed. One of the other creatures still standing flicked its tail from side to side like an angry cat and swept Becker off his feet, knocking his combat shotgun out of his hands and slamming him hard against a tree, driving the breath from his body. The dimetrodon towered over the young captain’s prone body. Yelling loudly and waving his arms, Connor ran forwards, with no thought for his own safety. Without stopping to think, Ryan ran forwards, the M4 still held firmly in his hands. He needed to get between the creature and Connor. What he really wanted was one of the flash bangs his – Becker’s – men were equipped with but beggars couldn’t be choosers. All he needed to do was distract it while Becker and Connor scrambled to safety. It couldn’t hurt him…

Or could it? The memory of his own scraped flesh and the copper tang of blood in his mouth intruded just as Ryan flung himself forward. The rank smell of the creature’s breath assaulted his nostrils. Ryan fired the M4 from the hip on continuous burst. All he had to do was bring this one down. Elsewhere, he knew the predators had lost ground, some being forced back through the anomaly, the others lying dead. If he could deal with this one then Connor and Becker would be safe.

The heavy jaws swung towards him with a speed wholly at odds with the beast’s lumbering gait. The unmistakeable click of an empty magazine told Ryan that the rifle in his hands had nothing left to give. He took the only course of action left to him and swung it like a club. Teeth closed around the metal, dragging the M4 out of his hands like a stick being grabbed by a over-sized and enthusiastic dog. The dimetrodon tossed the rifle to one side and then struck again.

Ryan heard a scream and wondered if it had come from his throat.

A moment later, he fell into darkness, his own name echoing in his ears…

* * * * *

“Ryan!”

“Tom! Tom Ryan!”

Ryan could hear his name being called but he had no idea where he was or how to respond. He felt like he was trying to swim through mud with his eyes closed. Or maybe they were open and everything around him was black…

“Ryan, don’t you fucking dare leave me again!”

The voice was Connor’s, Ryan knew that now, but he was still unable to reply.

“Ryan, please…”

The raw pain in Connor’s plea loosened the shackles that had been keeping Ryan away from his young lover.

He opened his eyes.

He was standing in the flat he’d shared with Connor. The living room was in darkness and Ryan knew without needing to be told that his return had shattered every light bulb in his vicinity.

“Ryan!” Connor’s voice now held delighted incredulity.

He flung himself into Ryan’s arms and for an instant Ryan found himself holding Connor and hugging him, and then that all too brief moment passed, leaving him as insubstantial as ever. Connor sank to his knees on the floor, relief finally gaining the upper hand over anguish, leaving him looking drained and exhausted. Ryan had no idea how long he had been gone or where he had been. His last memory was of trying to distract the dimetrodon.

“You’ve been gone six hours,” Becker said quietly. “Connor thought we’d lost you. The creature…” Becker hesitated, then said, “It ripped you to pieces, Ryan. One moment you were there, and the next you were gone. But there was blood. Ditzy tested it when we got back to the ARC. It was a match for yours.”

Ryan closed his eyes, trying to blot out the image of what that must have been like for Connor. He had no fucking idea what had happened or how much of a risk he had taken, but the effects of his action were all too plain. Tears streaked Connor’s face and his dark eyes were haunted by the memory of what he had seen. Ryan knelt beside him, but try as he might, he could not touch Connor. The frustration swirled inside him like a maelstrom and Ryan knew that the magnetic surge he was no doubt giving off would fry any electrical equipment on the flat, but damping his emotions down was beyond him.

Connor reached for him, but his hands simply passed through Ryan. He started to cry as if his heart would break.

Ryan could see the play of emotions on Becker’s face as well. It was hurting Becker to watch Connor like this. The young captain had one hand on his friend’s shoulder, but he knew it wasn’t his touch that Connor craved. Becker ran his hand down Connor’s back, rubbing gentle circles on the satin of Connor’s waistcoat. The eyes that met Ryan’s over Connor’s bowed head held a helplessness that sat ill with the soldier’s normal confident manner.

“It’s you he needs, not me,” Becker murmured. “Use my body if it will help him, Ryan. He needs to touch you. He needs to be sure you’re still…” Becker groped for the right word and finally settled on, “…here.”

Ryan hesitated. He knew what that offer would cost Becker. It would reduce him to nothing more than a bystander in his own body. On the only occasion they had done anything of that nature, Becker had even harboured fears that Ryan would be unwilling to relinquish his hold but clear and present danger had overridden all other considerations. Now there was no outside threat.

Becker met Ryan’s eyes and gave a slight nod.

How he had achieved what was needed last time, Ryan really didn’t know. It had been done in the heat of the moment, fuelled by desperation. Now the circumstances were very different. Connor had his arms clasped around his own body and he was rocking slightly on his knees, silent tears tracking down a pale face. Since his discovery only a few weeks ago that he hadn’t entirely lost Ryan, Connor’s happiness had been infectious but now harsh reality had come crashing back.

Ryan stretched out his hand and placed it over Becker’s to rest on Connor’s shoulder. Then he moved into Becker’s personal space in the most intimate way possible and Becker simply allowed him in. Ryan could feel the tension in the other man’s body as his consciousness meshed with Becker’s… the body he now inhabited was his for the taking…

The moment of tension faded like mist in sunlight and Ryan felt Becker withdraw, giving him the space he needed.

Ryan’s arms closed around Connor and he held him tightly. Connor squirmed in his grasp, burying his head in Ryan’s shoulder as Ryan’s hands gentled him and Ryan’s lips kissed his hair. Without even opening his eyes, Connor reacted to the contact entirely differently to the way he’d reacted to Becker. Connor’s lips sought Ryan’s with the hunger of a man too long without sustenance. His fingers clutched Ryan’s back, slid through his hair, slipped up under the black teeshirt, and dug into his borrowed flesh.

The surge of love crashed over Ryan like the breaking of a wave. The kiss was uncoordinated, all teeth and tongues, but what it lacked in finesse it made up with in feeling. Connor moaned into his mouth and held him even harder, if that was possible. Ryan lost himself in the kiss, surrendering all conscious thought.

How they moved from there to the bedroom, Ryan couldn’t say, but clothes were shed with the same frantic haste that had accompanied their first love-making. He knew that when Connor looked at him he was not seeing Becker’s face or body, he was seeing Ryan. Taking their time was simply not an option. Connor’s hands roamed over Ryan’s body, his mouth clung to Ryan’s skin, and their cocks were hard and hot between them. Ryan scrabbled in the drawer of the bedside table for a tube of lubricant, slicking himself quickly and then pulling Connor’s legs up onto his thighs and he quickly prepared his lover the way he had done so many times before.

Amidst the maelstrom of his emotions, Ryan could feel Becker slowly losing his own battle for control. The man whose body he now controlled also wanted Connor, Ryan had known that for a while and now Becker was about to get his wish, but not in the way he had envisaged. That thought almost jerked Ryan out of the moment and he hesitated.

Connor looked up at him, his face open and trusting and Ryan knew that he couldn’t deny him this, but he had to know that Becker was a willing participant. There would be consequences flowing from this for all three of them, but Ryan drew the line at proceeding further without Becker’s blessing.

“Ryan, please, I need you…” Connor had never looked more beautiful than in that moment, his pupils blown wide, his eyes appearing almost black against pale skin shadowed by the stubble of a long day.

“Do it…” The words slid through Ryan’s mind like a caress of silk. “Just don’t hold anything against me later…” And then conscious thought gave way to a rush of feeling as Becker lowered what was left of his defences, opening himself fully to Ryan the way he’d done when they had worked together to save Connor’s life.

Becker’s emotions crashed through Ryan with the force of a tidal wave as he sank into the tight heat of Connor’s body. Any thoughts of taking this slow and steady vanished as Connor wound his legs around Ryan’s waist and rode his thrusts with something fast approaching desperation.

Climax was not long in coming for either of them. As his orgasm ripped through him, Ryan knew his hold on Becker was loosening and it was Becker who gentled Connor through the tremors that racked his thin frame, Becker’s mouth that Connor claimed in a final, searching kiss and Becker’s hands that Connor held tightly as more tears dampened his cheeks.

And the darkness of the bedroom failed to hide the tears on Becker’s face as he slipped finally from Connor’s body and lay at his side.

Connor opened his eyes and held one hand out to Ryan. “Promise you won’t leave me, Tom?”

Ryan brushed Connor’s fingers with his. “I promise.”

He had no idea whether it was in his power to keep that promise or not, but he knew he would try. That was all he could do.

Connor smiled up at him and then turned his head to Becker. “Thank you as well. I…” he hesitated, looked between Ryan and Becker, searching for words and finally gave up. “Just thank you. Both of you.”

It was enough. They’d deal with everything else later but for tonight, Ryan was content to leave Connor in Becker’s arms and watch them while they slept.


End file.
